The present invention relates to an autofocus camera, and more particularly, it relates to a camera with a protective cover sheltering a taking lens and a number of rangefinder windows when the camera is not in use.
Autofocus cameras detecting distance by triangulation are widely known. The triangulation-type rangefinders are mainly either of active type or of passive type depending upon whether they have a light-emitting device. Both types have at least two rangefinder windows mounted on the front face of the camera.
In the active-type rangefinder, a light-emitting device for radiating near-infrared light is disposed in one rangefinder window, and a light-receiving device for detecting near-infrared light is disposed in the other rangefinder window. The distance to the object to be photographed is measured by detecting light reflected by the object while scanning the light-emitting device. An improved version of such an active-type rangefinder is also known, in which a light-receiving device is constructed of a plurality of light-receiving elements. With this arrangement, the distance to the object to be photographed is measured by detecting which light-receiving element has received the near-infrared light radiated from the light-emitting device and reflected by the object.
In the passive-type rangefinder, light-receiving element arrays are mounted one in each of the two rangefinder windows, and the distance to the object to be photographed is measured by detecting whether images obtained on the two light-receiving element arrays are the same or not. The passive-type rangefinder has one form in which a CCD (Charge Coupled Device) linear array is used as the light-receiving element array and another form in which a scanning mirror is disposed in front of one of the light-receiving element arrays.
It is known in the case of triangulation-type rangefinders that the longer the base length between two rangefinder windows, the greater the precision of distance detection. For compact cameras, in order to make the camera body look small, a vertical length of the camera (height) viewed from the front is made lss. Therefore, a sufficient base length is not obtained even when the rangefinder windows are spaced apart in a vertical direction. Since the horizontal length of the camera body is very great compared with the height, it may be possible to obtain a sufficient base length by horizontally spacing apart the rangefinder windows. However, in this case, a problem arises when, instead of a leather case, a protective cover is slidably mounted on the camera body. In such a case, when the camera is not used, the protective cover is slid to a closed position to shelter the taking lens, the viewfinder, the rangefinder windows, and the like. However, as described above, if a plurality of rangefinder windows are spaced apart horizontally along the camera body, the protective cover becomes unduly large, and as a result, the amount of sliding movement of the protective cover, between open and closed positions, also becomes unduly great.